Iceland's Met Office this afternoon reported a subglacial lava eruption at the Bardarbunga volcano, which has been rattled by thousands of earthquakes over the past week. It is the frozen island's largest volcano and sits under the country’s most expansive glacier.

Just minutes before the eruption Iceland raised its aviation alert to the highest level of red, which warns that an eruption could cause "significant emission of ash into the atmosphere."

In 2010 an eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano, in the south of the country, produced an ash cloud that caused a week of aviation chaos with more than 100,000 flights cancelled across the UK and the rest of the world.

A spokeswoman for NATS, the UK's air traffic control organisation, said: "NATS is monitoring the situation and working in close collaboration with the Met Office, Department for Transport and our safety regulator, the Civil Aviation Authority, as this dynamic situation develops further."

She added that NATS will help determine what impact the eruption will have for operations in UK airspace and advise airline customers accordingly.

Aviation chiefs are confident that the UK is much better prepared to deal with a potential ash cloud crisis than it was four years ago.

The Civil Aviation Authority said: "Volcanic ash can adversely affect aircraft in a number of ways. Jet aircraft engines in particular are susceptible to damage from volcanic ash.

"That's why there are comprehensive safety arrangements in place. As a result of the work that has been undertaken since the 2010 ash crisis and arrangements that have been put in place since, we are confident that high levels of public safety can be maintained, while minimising disruption."

The CAA said the improvements include:

A new system of regulating the way aviation deals with ash that allows more airspace to be used safely and gives airlines more input into the process;

Improvements in the observing and forecasting of where ash is and its density - including a new radar in Iceland to detect ash in the atmosphere;

The establishment of two working groups including airlines and scientists to act as advisers on ash forecasting and how best to use the output from the Met Office modelling system.

A spokeswoman for the Met Office said: "We are in close contact with the Icelandic Met Office, but currently they tell us that the eruptions are sub-glacial, so no ash has made it to the surface.

"If ash does make it to the surface, we will run our model which will indicate where any ash would go, and we will inform the CAA and Nats. They will then make the decision on how that will affect any air flights."

A Virgin Atlantic spokesman said a flight from London Heathrow to San Francisco was rerouted away from the volcano as a "precautionary measure".

"Safety and security is always our top priority," he said. "All other Virgin Atlantic flights continue to operate as normal, but we are advising all customers to visit our website for the latest information.

"We continue to closely monitor the situation and we are in ongoing dialogue with all of the relevant authorities."

Andrew McConnell, Flybe's director of communications, said: "We are monitoring the situation in Iceland very closely, currently there is no disruption to our services and all our flights are operating as norm

A spokesman for budget airline easyJet said it is putting its contingency plans into action following the red alert, using specialist technology to ensure any ash created by the eruption is detected and chartered.

"easyJet will use this and other data provided by the authorities to determine what, if any, changes it should make to its flying programme," he said.

"As things stand there are no changes to easyJet's flying programme, including flights to and from Iceland."
He added: "The safety and wellbeing of our passengers and crew is easyJet's highest priority."

Discover the World has set up a ‘volcano hotline’ which will inform interested travellers at short notice about the eruption, and fly them out to the site by helicopter or transport them by jeep.

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Volcanodiscovery considers the Marum Volcano in the southern Pacific Island of Ambrym one of the most unspoilt and intact places of the earth. In 2010, a Youtube video of volcanologist Geoff Mackley climbing into the boiling Marum crater went viral. "A lot of people might think I'm crazy," said the freelance photographer from Auckland, New Zealand. "The incredible noise... the heat.... the toxic gas... the falling rocks...the danger, nothing else in life will ever compare to the mind blowing rush of being so close to a spectacle like this!"

Located under a glacier, Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull volcano erupted on April 14, 2010, producing scenic lava flows and a plume of gas-rich volcanic ash which disrupted air travel and caused regional mayhem for several weeks. Eyjafjallajökull, some 75 miles (120 kilometers) east of Reykjavik, erupted March 20 after almost 200 years of dormancy.

The Llaima volcano in southern Chile spewed lava and a thick column of ash, which rose more than 9,300 feet into the sky in January 2008. The eruption forced the emergency evacuation of some 150 people from the Conguillio National Park where the volcano is located, 400 miles south of Santiago.

Ethiopia's Erta Ale is considered to be one of the most active volcanos containing basaltic lava, which can rise to a temperature of 1,200 degrees Celsius, according to the Sun. Active since 1906, Erta Ale, which translates to "smoking mountain" in the local language, is one of five lava lakes in the world, according to Physics Central.

In 2012, Europe's tallest active volcano Mount Etna in southern Italy came back to life and released a dense cloud of ash lava.

Mt. Sakurajima, one of Japan's most active volcanoes, erupted several times in March 2012.

A new vent opening at the Kilauea volcano, one of the world's most active, sent lava shooting up to 65 feet high in May 2011.
Kilauea has been in constant eruption since Jan. 3, 1983.